Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

We’re all more than a bit angry and sad right now, but I’ve thought it over, and the moral platitudes being published by the IDF Spokesperson on Twitter have been grating on my nerves since they began, and my feelings about them have nothing to do with the deaths of our soldiers today, other than spurring me on to write this post.

Today the @IDFSpokesperson tweeted:

IDF Chief of Staff: “We have a moral obligation to avoid civilian casualties. We also have a moral obligation to defend our people.”

I have a simple question for the Chief of Staff: Which of these two moral obligations takes priority, and which action has higher moral value for you?

It’s a very real question, because it affects the decisions you make.

I know which one I give a much higher priority to, but I can’t tell which one our Chief of Staff considers morally superior, with that morally equivalent statement he’s bantering about.

I’m very much reminded of the 2002 decision to needlessly send a dozen soldiers into a booby-trapped Jenin alley, in a morally corrupt attempt to minimize enemy civilian casualties.

Perhaps I am being too harsh right now, and speaking out of the loss we all feel, but didn’t we learn from Jenin that it is morally and tactically superior to remotely soften and even destroy known dangerous zones, even with civilians present, before putting feet down on the ground?

Are there other factors in his decision? Could be, and in fact there probably are, such as world opinion, or US pressure.

But we can’t know if those factors actually enter into his calculations, as this moral platitude is the only one the Chief of Staff actually bothered to share with us on the subject.

Perhaps it would be simply better if he didn’t tweet moral equivocations like that in the first place, which lead me to conclusions I don’t want to believe are true.

And then we have:

IDF Chief of Staff: “We will continue offering help [to Gaza]…Even as we fight the enemy, we are transferring humanitarian assistance.”

So, even as we fight the enemy, we provide that same enemy with assistance?

Has he forgotten that before their violent and murderous coup, Hamas won 60% of the Parliamentarian seats in Gaza in open elections? Don’t Hamas’s citizens bear any responsibility for their actions and choices?

Don’t their cheers and chocolates after terror attacks on Jews, indicate some inkling of shared complicity on their part with their leadership?

It appears the IDF Chief of Staff doesn’t think so.

Don’t get me wrong. I am sure there are innocent civilians among them, but to brag that we are supporting an enemy population even as they attack us, which also enables them to attack us for longer? There’s something very unhealthy about that.

And finally we have:

IDF Chief of Staff: “There are no militaries like ours. There are no militaries that drop leaflets and telephone civilians before a strike.”

I hope he doesn’t break his arm patting himself on the back. But the world really doesn’t care about Israel’s “moral” acts as much as he thinks it does.

In fact, it is Israel who keep inviting the world in to criticize us, by looking over our shoulder every two seconds to make sure the world still likes us (and some of it does, and some of it doesn’t).

Sending out tweets like that, invites closer scrutiny and investigation into our actions, if for no other reason than to prove it wrong that we are “morally superior”.

In the world of Twitter, where everything is fast and immediate, so is the hatred.

Over the past few days and in response to the mainstream media coverage of Operation Protective Edge and the hundreds of rockets indiscriminately fired at Israeli civilians, new hashtags have been trending. Because so much of the reporting emphasizes Gazan casualties and use Palestinian Arab statements casting blame on Israel, casual observers believe Israel started the conflict, believe that Israel is waging a disproportionate response to Gaza rockets, and believe Israel is guilty of war crimes and humanitarian violations.

When a critical mass of tweets all contain the same phrase following a hashtag (#) sign, it is considered “trending.”

On Tuesday, July 15, the phrase #IfHitlerWereAlive was trending in certain parts of the world. Here are a few examples:

* #IfHitlerWereAlive the Jews would have been killed and Muslims in Gaza would live peacefully.

Within hours after making the threat, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan closed the curtain on Turkish residents’ ability to engage in the social media known as Twitter.

It happened by midnight (6:00 p.m. ET) on Thursday, March 20.

A 26-year old woman in Istanbul for whom anonymity was requested relayed to The Jewish Press that when she attempted to use her twitter account tonight, this message popped up: “FORBIDDEN.”

The justification given by Erdoğan for taking the extreme step was that Twitter officials refused to follow orders from Turkish courts to “remove some links” as requested by certain Turkish citizens, Turkey’s Hurriyet reported.

The Turkish agency responsible for communications, the Communications Technologies Institution (BTK) was invested with enormous powers under the recently passed Internet law. It listed the three court rulings and a prosecutor’s decision on its website as the reason for the shutdown.

Matters within the formerly prosperous and increasingly modernized country began taking a dramatic turn for the worse over the past few years. Vigorous distrust of the government began to be publicly expressed, such as during the Gezi Park protests in the spring of 2013, and later in the wake of the government corruption probes that are still continuing. These ongoing distractions have dragged the current administration into a vortex of endless internal criticism, economic instability and external contempt. Erdoğan responded to the unrest by blaming Twitter as the source of his problems.

YouTube has been banned repeatedly by Turkey over the last number of years.

Earlier this month the Turkish prime minister threatened to shut down Facebook and YouTube.

A Belgian watchdog on anti-Semitism warned it was preparing to take legal action against online propagators of a new anti-Semitic joke about the Holocaust.

The Belgian League against Anti-Semitism, or LBCA, issued the threat regarding a photograph of an oven with paper money inside, bearing the caption, “The Jew trap is set.”

The photo surfaced earlier this month. One of its early disseminators was a Twitter user from Belgium using the handle Simree Dikule. The picture was re-tweeted by thousands of additional users and also posted on Facebook by a student of the Bracops Lambert high school near Brussels, the La Capitale daily reported Tuesday. The student, who was identified only as “M.,” wrote on Facebook: “It’s racist, but it’s funny.”

“This disgusting and unacceptable new joke has a double insult,” said LBCA President Joel Rubinfeld. “It alludes to the anti-Semitic stereotype that Jews are greedy and to the crematoria that Nazis used to burn Jews during the Holocaust.”

The tweet and the Facebook post have been removed, though it is unclear whether the users or the companies removed them.

Last year, a French court forced the California-based Twitter social network to divulge information on users who had disseminated anti-Semitic jokes. Twitter was sued by the UEJF French Jewish student union after the hashtags #unbonjuif (“a good Jew”) and #unjuifmort (“a dead Jew”) became hugely popular because they were used in what Le Monde termed “a competition of anti-Semitic jokes.”

Twitter argued that, as an American company, it adhered to U.S. laws on hate speech, which are far more liberal than those of France and many other European countries.

But the French court ruled that the French blogosphere and online interaction between French residents constituted French public space, where French legislation against hate speech applies.

British lawmaker David Ward has raised Jewish ire again for tweeting two days after the death of Ariel Sharon. “Sharon’s death makes you think. The brutal, genocidal treatment of Jews must never be forgotten but … the Palestinians were not responsible.”

One tweet in response to Ward, by British Jewish gay rights activist Benjamin Cohen, read, “I’m not sure who has implied the Palestinians were, other than you of course.”

“We are disappointed to see David Ward tweeting about sensitive issues in such a way,” read a joint statement from the Jewish Leadership Council and Board of Deputies of British Jews, the London Jewish News reported. “It raises questions about his motives and his real intentions.”

Ward also tweeted on Jan. 13: “Signed #Holocaust Memorial Book of Commitment in advance of the Holocaust Memorial Day — we must stand up for oppressed wherever they be.”

Previously, Ward had angered the Jewish community on International Holocaust Memorial Day last January when he said he was “saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could, within a few years of liberation, be inflicting atrocities on the Palestinians in the new State of Israel — and continue to do so.”

The controversy was renewed when reports emerged that Ward asked his staff if replacing “the Jews” with “the Jewish community” would mollify his critics, leading to another round of complaints and sanctions including a requirement that he attend language classes.

In July, Ward was suspended from the party for three months after tweeting: “Am I wrong or are am I right? At long last the #Zionists are losing the battle – how long can the #apartheid State of #Israel last?”

Hamas has castigated Twitter for closing its account, an action that it said “exposes the ‘unprofessional’ policy of the latest, and the total ‘bias’ to the Israeli occupation and real terrorism in the world,” according to the terrorist organization’s website.

Of course, Hamas says Israel is a terrorist organization, while Hamas, in its own words, is on a “humanitarian mission.”

Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel, so if that is its “humanitarian mission,” it has good company with Iran. But if that is the case, why is Mahmoud Abbas trying to bring Hamas back into a unity government with his Fatah party? After all, Abbas wants to make peace with Israel.

And if Hamas wants to destroy Israel, and Abbas wants to join up with Hamas, why is U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry calling Abbas a “peace partner”?

It is probably all part of a Zionist plot aimed at mocking Hamas, which said “Twitter seems subordinated to the American- pro-Israel organizations supporting terror against Palestinian people.”

Hamas is against the Kerry-sponsored talks, so everything Kerry must be a part of plot to prevent Hamas from “exposing Israel’s terror against Palestinian people.” Abbas probably is probably taking orders from President Obama to compromise Hamas’ principles.

But Hamas is optimistic it can succeed without Twitter.

“The big success we achieved in reflecting the real bright image of the Palestinian Resistance to the world pushed the terrorist entity ‘Israel’ and its allies towards the repeated suspension of our accounts on the social networks.

“ Twitter should understand that al-Qassam Brigades will never surrender and will keep exposing the real terrorism of Israel to the world and nobody can prevent us from practicing media activism on social networks because we believe along with millions of free people around the world in right to freedom of speech and expression.”

How can you Tweet that in 140 characters? Simple. “Hamas on humanitarian mission for state of suicide bombers.